Durham DA clears NCCU police in killing of man who shot at them

N.C. Central University police were justified in shooting a man to death last year after he shot at them and refused to drop a shotgun, Durham County District Attorney A. Leon Stanback says.

In a statement issued by his office Tuesday, Stanback said that all the evidence gathered by the State Bureau of Investigation after Tracy Daquan Bost was killed Sept. 23 showed that he “took cover in a thicket located on the campus of NCCU, where he continued to threaten law enforcement with additional gunfire” after having shot at officers earlier.

Campus police, alerted by Durham city police, had approached Bost when he got off a bus at Cecil and Lincoln streets about 10:15 p.m. Bost, 22, had been released from the Durham County jail the previous day and had called the mother of his son to ask for a ride to Salisbury, his hometown.

Police said at the time that Bost looked like a man described in an apartment break-in earlier that evening, when one of the items stolen was a shotgun.

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NCCU police said Bost pulled a shotgun that he had been hiding in his pants, fired at them and ran to the thicket.

SBI agents investigate all incidents in which a police officer shoots someone.

“After a careful review of statements, investigating agents’ notes and results of tests and examinations, this office has determined that no probable cause exists to charge any person with a crime in the death of Tracy Bost,” Stanback’s statement says.

Stanback wrote that he understands that for Bost’s family, “this is a difficult time and this will be a hard decision to accept, but it is a decision dictated by the evidence and the law.”